The Insider Interview - Scott Sheppard

The high-scoring forward talks about returning for his fifth professional season with the Texas Brahmas

Scott Sheppard recently returned to North Richland Hills and will be re-joining the team as soon as some immigration details are finalized.

Sheppard, 25, began his career playing in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) for four seasons with the Kitchener Rangers, Ottawa 67’s and London Knights. In 262 games, he tallied 239 points (91 G, 148 A) and a mere 162 penalty minutes.

The Selkirk, Ontario native went pro and joined the Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs for the 2004-05 season, scoring 50 points (27 G, 23 A) in 58 regular season games and adding 3 assists in 7 post-season contests. During the season, he also played in two games with the Rochester Americans (AHL).

Sheppard split the 2005-06 season between the Mudbugs and the Americans. He played 38 games with the Mudbugs and notched an amazing 57 points (38 G, 19 A) and 50 penalty minutes. He averaged a goal per game and led the team in power play goals with 17. Returning to the Americans, Sheppard played in 21 games and added another 12 points (5 G, 7 A) to his tally for the regular season. He re-joined the Mudbugs for their post-season , played in 15 games and scored 15 points (7 G, 8 A).

During the 2006-07 season, Sheppard moved to the ECHL, splitting time between the Trenton Titans and the Columbia Inferno. He tallied 18 points (5 G, 13 A) in 31 games played.

After the season ended, he went back to farming in Ontario. Persuaded by Blair Manning who had joined the resurgent Texas Brahmas, Sheppard was persuaded to sign on, re-uniting with several former Mudbugs and becoming a major contributor to the teams' success last season. In 48 regular season games, Sheppard scored 54 points (28 G, 26 A) with just 48 penalty minutes. He also recorded his 100th CHL goal during the season. During the playoff run, he played in all 14 games adding 15 points (13 G, 2 A) to his total for the year.

Sheppard returned to farming in the off-season, unsure if he would play for the Brahmas again this season but in the end, he decided to re-sign and has returned to NYTEX and is expected to begin playing again soon.

I spoke to Scott by phone on his farm in Canada just before he returned to North Richland Hills to re-join the team.

Q: Who brought you in with the Brahmas organization originally?

A: I played with Dan Wildfong and Forbes MacPherson so I was in contact with them but the main guy that I always talked to, and still do on a daily basis, is Blair Manning, the captain there last year. I was at a point where I was frustrated and I kind of had a tough go of it in the ECHL. I came home and started farming and was getting more involved and was starting to like it and he convinced me to come and play last year. It’s like anything, you have a good year and you get so close to go back to the finals. This year, I got the itch again and I came to terms with Coach Wildfong.

Q: How was the transition from the OHL to the CHL when you came to play for Bossier-Shreveport?

A: It wasn’t too bad. I felt like I prepared myself pretty well. I went to Rochester’s camp to begin with and went in good shape. It’s funny; I thought it would be a lot faster. I guess the only adjustment I really found was I always played for coaches that stressed offense, offense, offense. When I got to the professional level, all they stress is defense, defense, defense. That was really for me the biggest adjustment. Musky in Shreveport there was always known as a defensive coach. His record shows it, as you know his goalie averages, the penalty kills and stuff like that. Fonger is not too far behind. He has the same mentality. As you can see, defense wins hockey games. Musky is usually a 40-game winner every year and last year, in Fonger’s first year, he won 40, too.

Q: Coming in with the Brahmas last season, you had a few guys that you played with that were also former Mudbugs. Minard, Manning and Cacciola to name a few. Did that make the transition easier, coming on board with guys that you have known and played with before?

A: It does. I think that kind of helped us get off to our start too. You had a new coach, a new assistant coach and those few guys, and this new team that took a year off and you have to bring 20 new guys in. You can kind of start and core yourself around six or seven guys like Dan did. I thought we were big contributors the year we were with Bossier-Shreveport. But we went to the finals. We had Cash in the net who came on in the end of the season and won us a lot of hockey games and won us a lot through the playoff stretch that year. That was a big signing for Fonger last year. When you start your defense out with one of the best goalies in the league, it makes your team stronger to begin with. It was definitely an easy transition when you get guys like that on board and are able to start with that kind of group of guys.

Q: Was it a big adjustment looking at Fonger as a head coach rather than a fellow player?

A: It was at first because your still of that mentality that you guys are buddy buddy and you hang out all the time, as players are used to and now you have to draw a line. You still can have fun and enjoy the game, be able to joke around with him. When it comes down to the final say, he’s the boss; he’s got to make the decisions. Also, he’s the one that has everything riding on his back; he’s the head guy. As friends, you only want to see him succeed.

Q: Were you surprised that you guys did so well last year or did you have a pretty good level of confidence coming in to the season?

A: Its’ tough. You never really know. You can have a good team on paper and then you get going and there’s just stuff that just doesn’t get clicking or you don’t get any balance. I thought we might not have had the best team on paper, but we all had a good work ethic and we worked hard every night and you keep going for 60 minutes. It frustrates the other team more than anything. When they get frustrated, they’re taking penalties. We had our skill guys like Jordan Cameron and Jacobsen and Stromer. They were 30-goal guys and when given the opportunity on the power play, they would come through. That’s what won us a lot of our hockey games.

Q: Going through the season and through the playoffs, obviously it wasn’t the desired outcome for the Brahmas last season, but did you feel pretty good about what you all had accomplished?

A: Yeah, You’ve got to feel good every year at the end of the season. You have to try and pull as many positives out of it as you can. Looking back, we went up to Colorado and we lost the first two and then came back and split wins and then we win game five and we go back to one of the toughest arenas to play in and we won game six and then we lost 3-2 in game seven. It’s a heartbreaker, but you have to take the positives out of it. We played well as a team and we stuck together. We stuck to our guns and our game plan. It was a frustrating way to end the season but that’s why there’s 08-09. We’ve got to go back out and get back on the horse and start riding again and see how we make out.

Q: The team has a different face this year obviously with Anders over in Denmark and Jordan over in Germany. Blair’s not coming back aboard this year. Are you going to miss having him to play alongside this season?

A: Oh yeah, we’ve always played well together. He’s not a guy to like to shoot the puck a lot and I’m not a guy that really likes to skate and carry the puck much, so it worked out good that way and I always liked to shoot the puck, so we were a pretty duo to keep together. It’ll be an adjustment. I’ll miss the guy, that’s for sure. There are lots of other good hockey players out there too and we’ll just have to make adjustments and go from there.

Q: Looks like Chris Thompson is not coming back this season either. Do you keep in touch with Chris?

A: No. Last year at the end of the season I heard he was going was going home to Saskatchewan. I think he’s tied in with the oil industry out there. To know exactly what he’s doing, I’d be lying to tell you something. I’m sure he said something to do with the oil rigs anyway, whether it’s repairing them or drilling…I’m 90% sure he was doing something with the oil business out west.

Q: Are you familiar with some of the new players Fonger has brought onto the team this season?

A: Lance Galbraith, I played against in the ECHL so I’m familiar with him. Brad Bonello, guys like that that I played in the OHL. Then we got our D corps back and we got our two tenders which is a really good start again. Some of the other guys, you hear the names in the league but I don’t know too much about them.

Q: What did you think of the Brahmas fans and playing at NYTEX?

A: It’s like any city you go into. It’s always the same I find, when you go city to city. When you play in the OHL, you go to Ottawa and you think that they are the best fans you could ever play in front of. You get 8-10,000 fans out to a game and they’re yelling and going crazy and then I got traded to London and you’re thinking you don’t know how it’s going to end up and you know we’re getting 9,200 fans there yelling – it’s the same in Texas, you have your same fans that are really loyal and they’re there every game win or lose.

It would be nice if we played in a larger arena like in Shreveport or Colorado but our rink’s got its own signature to it. There’s a lot of teams that didn’t like coming to play us last year at our arena because we were a big group of guys that could skate. We were really good with the puck and we didn’t lay off any hits and it makes it tough game for a team coming into a barn that they already don’t want to come to because it’s a smaller facility. I definitely think it played to our advantage last year.

Q: Are you going to be able to handle the bus rides this year?

A: I hope so. I made a few purchases to see if we can make bus trips a little shorter. I usually like to stay up and harass guys and give them a hard time.

Q: A number of Brahmas fans I’ve spoken to were happy to know that you were coming back. Do you have anything in particular you’d like to tell the fans?

A: I’m excited to see them all and get the season rolling. Hopefully everything goes good here and we get off to a good start and we can start winning some hockey games and get back on the roll we finished on last year. Hopefully they’ll all be there to support us.

Photo Credit: Robert Keith